A Virginia college swim team joined former President Donald Trump on stage Saturday night as he rallied his supporters and called for barring transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports.
Speaking to the crowd in Salem, Virginia, the county seat of Roanoke, Trump lashed out at the “radical left” for its “transgender craziness” — a particularly personal issue for the athletes from nearby Roanoke College.
In Oct. 2023, a transgender swimmer who previously competed on the men’s team a year prior joined the women after transitioning, prompting the female athletes to sound the alarm over being forced to compete against a teammate with a potential inherent advantage.
“The brave members of the swim team stood up to the transgender fanatics,” Trump told the crowd.
Seven members of the women’s team, all wearing pink shirts with hot dogs that read “Keep men out of women’s sports,” joined the Republican nominee onstage, where team captain Lilly Mullens praised Trump for backing their cause.
“We know that men have an inherent advantage over women in sports, and due to current policies, though, men are competing against women of all ages in all sports,” Mullens said.
“Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have advocated for and pushed for this anti-woman, sex-based discrimination to continue all over this country, and point blank, it’s unfair,” Mullens said.
In addition to broaching the issue of transgender athletes in women’s sports, Trump also repeated warnings from an earlier campaign stop in North Carolina of a looming economic crisis under Harris’ leadership.
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“It was announced that Kamala’s economy is like in a depression,” he said, citing the latest jobs report that revealed the US added only 12,000 jobs in October — the lowest total since 2020.